However what was being discussed by the OP was setting a flat rate for corporate tax lower than the current rate and eliminating all concessions and deductions. Companies only pay 10%... but they always pay 10%, no more or less.

That will never happen. The only way government can keep influence with companies is by exercising those concessions and deductions.

Trump's deal with Carrier was nothing BUT concessions and deductions. The fact that he chose to use his very first public act in that manner does not indicate someone who's going to want to cede the power of the "deal".

1) You obviously have to pay extreme roaming prices. And it does not matter if it is a call over your own provider. They will see to it that you pay extra and a lot extra. As they are flying all other pricing regulations will be deemed void, regardless that other places are not allowed to do the same, because they are on the ground (e.g. no roaming cost or blocking in malls or conference centers)2) If you want to book a seat where you can do calls, you need to book extra3) If you want to book a seat where people are not calling, you need to pay extra4) To pay for the systems to be installed, prices will increase to pay for it, regardless if you use it or not or if it is even needed or not.5) You will be spammed 10 minutes after you get in the plane.

OK, 4 and 5 might be a bit over the tom but 1, 2 and 3 are things I could see happening.

mmm, interesting.But I'm sure you can come up with some scenario where a natural disaster kills them both at once.Congress certainly thought it was possible - which is WHY there is a third-in-line person. Same thing could happen if, say, they both got involved in some major corruption scandal and both of them were impeached.

Actually... you're joke may be somewhat true. Stress is a major contributor to heart disease, and living in a country where mass shootings is a regular occurrence (in fact more regular than ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD -... actually that's selling it short, TWICE as many in 20 years as the next 10 countries COMBINED) and everybody has a fucking gun, with no real measure to determine if they even know where the safety is, would sure as hell leave ME permanently stressing out.

If we were a little more like the Chinese in dealing with our companies, you'd see less of this. Throwing an executive in general lock up has a certain pour encourager les autres effect that fining a company and letting them debate a sock party for the people responsible does not have. It's like I said after Deepwater Horizon. You really think if we left BP alone but brought the death penalty for felony murder against the executive(s) responsible for 11 oilmen dying and that much environment damage that the oil industry wouldn't stand up, sphincters puckered and be good Boy Scouts on worker safety and the environment?

There is no such thing as an abortifacient. No abortifacient birth control has been on sale in decades. And the pill was NEVER one.

If anything the pill PREVENTS abortions. Any sexually active women will naturally abort about 2 out of 3 fertilized eggs - only one in three fertilizations lead to successfull implantation. By preventing the eggs being released in the first place - the pill actually prevents these natural abortions from happening.

>In actual fact, one of the biggest contributors to lower life expectancy is obesity, and one of the biggest identifiable causes of obesity is government policy: corn subsidies and bad federal nutritional guidelines.

Something Obama made a serious effort to act on early in his presidency, he desperately tried to regulate that industry - make sure consumers are informed of what's in their food and encourage companies to improve the quality of what they sell. Only to have it scuppered by the republican congress.So if there is any blame on government - then by your own reasoning - that blame lies with the republican party.

And with high healthcare cost comes that people will go to the doctor only when they are really, really ill.Car comparison: instead of changing oil every X miles, you wait till the motor complains (long after the light goes on) and then you go. Might be in time, might be too late, but it will cost more than just an oil change.

But, you can't have poor people dying because they can't afford healthcare... and an individual cannot really negotiate with a large corporation - especially when the price for turning down their offer is to die.

So what can we do... mmm well we could pool a lot of people's money together. They could negotiate prices as a group - which can be on equal footing with the suppliers, and the group as a whole isn't "about to die" so the negotiations are no longer happening under duress. Then you can also use standard actuarial table structures to spread risk around so that those with little risk right now can help cover those with high risk - and get better results for all.Of course, such systems work better the larger the pool - so you will want to get EVERYBODY in on it (that's a fundamental attribute of actuarial tables - they only WORK if they are BIG). Ideally - you want the pool to be available, in it's entirety, to pay for healthcare - so it should probably not be profit driven.

There was a system, very much like that, in Scottland in the 19th century - it was actually the first ever use of actuarial tables to spread risk, instituted by the Scottish church to help the wealthier congregations assist the poorer ones in their care duties.But it doesn't seem ideal to have a religious organisation run this - after all, people don't all have the same religion and it would cause friction that would limit the pool of potential contributors.

Mmm we could set up a massive, non-religiously affiliated organisation to collect dues and manage the fund, handle the negotiations and take care of the payments when we need it !Seems like a huge amount of effort to get set up and convince everybody to sign on though - and a bit of a chicken/egg problem since the greatest benefits (the negotiation power) only comes when you have lots of members, but to get lots of members you need to offer the benefits.

If only there was some organisation that was already established, had lots of negotiation power, the infrastructure to collect and manage dues with an already existing tiered-structure to scale your dues to your income, capacity to handle payments, no profit motive and no religious affiliation which we could leverage to run this national insurance scheme for us... I know we can use our government ! They're perfect ! This is EXACTLY the sort of thing we invented them for !